Glittering Glass and Burning Light
by androidilenya
Summary: Elwing and a Silmaril.


Elwing's father had come to Doriath to heal its hurts, to rebuild the ruined halls and provide the people with a king. He had come with hope, and light, and his children had been happy there for awhile.

He wore the Nauglamir on high holidays only, at first, or when he went among the people, for the shining jewel set in its center seemed to have a power over those who saw it — power to kindle cheer and valor, and power to bring Doriath just a little bit closer to its former glory. Her favorite memories were of him, smiling and bending to help with the work — the king, heir of Elu Thingol, with his sleeves rolled up and dirt under his fingernails — with the light of the jewel in the necklace flashing in the eyes of his subjects (who, for this time, were no longer only his subjects but his fellow workers, rebuilding a life they had lost).

When her father was not wearing it, he kept it in a box on his bedroom table. It was the same box that the messenger had brought, along with tidings of her grandparent's death. She had been even younger at the time, but old enough to understand what it meant when her father lifted a necklace she had only ever seen on Lúthien's neck from the worn wooden box and clasped it around his own.

She had also known what it meant when her father buried his face in her mother's shoulder, shuddering, after everyone else had gone.

But the light of that necklace, brighter than the sunlight she and her brothers played in, purer than Varda's stars…

Her father never locked his room, so it was easy to slip in one day, when no one else was around. She had bribed her brothers with a promise of honey cakes (made by her own hands, baked just this morning) for a few hours alone, and they had never suspected a thing.

Not that she was doing anything _bad_, of course. Elwing just… wanted to look. There was nothing wrong with that.

Still, her heart seemed to be beating just a bit faster than was normal, and she flinched when she caught a glimpse of motion out of the corner of her eye — and laughed shakily when she realized it was only her own reflection, caught in the hanging mirror above her mother's side of the bed.

"Don't be stupid," she told herself, almost angrily, placing a hand on the carved top of the box. "It's just… it's just a necklace, anyways. S'probably not even as magical as the stories say it is." One last moment of hesitation, and her fingers flipped the catch and lifted the lid.

It was even brighter from this close, so bright she wondered how her father could bear it, having such brilliance just under his face. Squinting slightly, she leaned in.

The jewel — the famed Silmaril, made by the hands of the cursed Fëanor, brought out of the darkness by her grandmother and grandfather — it shone in the middle of the mass of curled gold, reflecting her wide eyes, spilling many-hued radiance across her face. Her mother said that white light was really all the colors, but she hadn't believed it until now, because the light from the Silmaril was every shade of twilight blue and ivy green, every color in Eluréd's paint box.

She snapped the lid shut, blinking back shimmering purple afterimages, and a hesitant smile crossed her face.

Beautiful.

* * *

She hadn't wanted to run away, but there had been an emptiness in her father's face that scared her, and she couldn't look weak in front of her brothers, in front of her people. When he shoved a cloth-wrapped bundle into her hand and she caught the gleam of light as it shifted, she knew what was in it — and knew that her father did not expect to be victorious.

She didn't want to believe it.

"I'll give it back to you," she told him, breath frosting in the chill winter air. "When you drive them away, I can come back and you can put it back on."

He tried to smile. "Go, Elwing."

Her last memory of her father was him standing in the doorway, saluting her with his sword flashing in the setting sun.

* * *

Dior had been born to be a king. He knew what it was that a king did — healed his people, worked side by side with them, earned their love through action and not through birth. He did what a king had to do, and upheld the pride of the people of Doriath, cost what it might. And he had paid the price without fear, dying alongside his people as a true king should.

_I don't want to rule. Take it back, Ada, take back the necklace and this damned jewel, and take back your crown. It sits too heavily on my head, and I cannot wear it with the same strength you did._

Unlike her father, Elwing never took the Nauglamir off, never let it out of her sight. She felt safer surrounded by its light, bathed in something that seemed to keep everything else away. She knew it gave her a beauty she did not have, and gave her a strength she could not have lived without.

At night, when the fears were strongest, when she could not close her eyes and fall asleep, she would curl up under the covers as she had when she was a child, pulling the linen over her head so it formed a small nest. Her world narrowed to that small space of warm air, lit by the light of the Silmaril about her neck. And then she could fall asleep, with the hard jewels pressing into her skin, leaving small pink marks the next morning — but also leaving a sense of rest and well-being that so often seemed to escape her, now.

And when she slept with the Silmaril, she dreamed of her father, of a time when she was not a princess in exile, when all she knew were summer days and her nights had only the stars above, dimmer yet more familiar than the light she slept under now.

_Be strong, Elwing,_ her father told her, and she watched her reflection in the jewel through dazzled eyes and smiled through her tears.

"I'll try, Ada," she replied, the last word trailing off into silence as her eyelids drifted shut and the fine golden chain slipped from between her fingers to settle back around her throat.


End file.
